1 Field of the Invention
The present invention belongs to a technical field of a hard copy such as a photographic print and a hard copy creation method. In particular, the present invention relates to a high-quality hard copy in which textures of objects forming an image such as a stereoscopic effect or textures of an image are preferably represented, and a creation method for this hard copy.
Various proposals have been made in order to improve textures of photographic prints, hard copies outputted by various types of printers, and the like to create products with high added values.
For example, JP 3-190778 A discloses a thermal printer using transfer paper applied with a sublimation dye, which can create a recorded image having desired gloss or matte by providing an area formed of a material different from the sublimation dye in the transfer paper and reheating an image via this area.
In addition, JP 8-39841 A discloses a method of representing gloss of a hard copy image freely according to the glossiness of a printed image by, in creation of a hard copy by a thermal transfer printing apparatus, photographing a subject in two kinds of states in which reflected light from the subject is large and small, respectively, to obtain image signals, subtracting the image signal of the state in which the reflected light is small from the image signal of the state in which the reflected light is large to generate a gloss signal, printing an image of the subject on a recording medium using image signals obtained by photographing the subject with the same image pickup means, creating a hard copy of the image of the subject turned into image signals, and thereafter further reheating the hard copy (image) according to the gloss signal.
According to these methods, glossiness or non-glossiness can be given to an image reproduced on a hard copy.
However, the method disclosed in JP 3-190778 A is a method for giving gloss or matte to an image consisting of a sublimation dye by reheating the image via an area of a material different from the sublimation dye. On the other hand, the method disclosed in JP 8-39841 A is a method for giving gloss to an image by melting a color material forming the image.
Therefore, both the methods can give gloss to a desired part of an image, but can only represent gloss as textures of the objects forming the image (i.e., light reflectivity of objects in the image) and cannot represent other textures.
In other words, in order to obtain a hard copy with a high added value, in addition to such textures, an image is preferably represented three-dimensionally in view of the depth of the image (scene), relative positions of objects, and a stereoscopic effect of the objects. However, such a stereoscopic representation cannot be realized by any of the above methods.
In addition, as described above, the method disclosed in JP 3-1990778 A only reheats a desired area of an image consisting of a sublimation dye via an area formed of a material different from the sublimation dye. Thus, glossiness or non-glossiness suitable for an image cannot be given.
On the other hand, as described above, the method disclosed in JP 8-39841 A gives glossiness to an image by generating a gloss signal and melting a color material forming the image. Therefore, desired glossiness can be given to a desired part of the image.
However, the method disclosed in JP 8-39841 A requires special photographing of a subject for obtaining a gloss signal separately from photographing of the subject for reproducing an image. Moreover, with this method, it is necessary to make preparation from a photographing state in order to output an image having desired glossiness. In other words, desired glossiness or non-glossiness cannot be given to an image which has already been outputted.